1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the method and apparatus for thermal property estimation (thermal properties measurement) particularly, using noncontactly measured temperatures for objects or living things.
2. Description of a Related Art
FIG. 5 shows the general thermal property estimation apparatus. In this apparatus, temperature distributions are generated in the object 4 by thermal source 13, and the generated temperatures at the plural positions are measured using the temperature detector 12 (thermocoupler etc). Then, by data processor 16, the generated heat fluxes are modeled using the finite difference method or finite element method, and the internal thermal conductivity distribution in an ROI (region of interest) is estimated using sensitivity theorem. Here, the ROI is the target region of unknown conductivity.
However, this apparatus requires the external thermal sources for realizing the temperature distributions. This causes the problem that disturbs the already existing temperature field.
Furthermore, this apparatus requires vast calculation amounts because the conductivity distribution is estimated by updating the estimate using the sensitivity theorem such that the measured temperature data equal to the calculated data using the estimate. Furthermore, for the calculation of the temperatures, the boundary conditions of the temperature and/or heat flux are required; then it was impossible to obtain the estimate of the conductivity distribution only from the internal temperature measurements in the ROI.